The theme for January is A Grand Rising and my message is titled “A New Dawn.” The question that comes up for me is, how can we allow the sun to set on the old ways, shake off the worn-out beliefs of yesterday, and rise up into a New Dawn? I shared three ideas on Sunday morning.
The first is the Power of Intention. At the start of a new year, many of us like to set intentions for how we’d like to shift or show up throughout the year. The underlying truth is that intention-setting has value every day, not just the first day of the year. So, instead of starting each day with a good morning, what if we were to begin our day with the deeper intention of a grand rising? How would our day and the rest of our lives unfold, simply by leaning into the beauty, the grandeur, and the possibility of each new day? How would our day and the rest of our lives unfold, if we were to lean into something bigger than just waking up?
Intention is our directed will. It is our power. It is our declaration to the Universe. Intention is the directed impulse of consciousness that contains the seed-form of that which we aim to create. Like real seeds, intentions can’t grow if we hold on to them. Only when we release our intentions into the fertile depths of our consciousness can they grow and flourish. Setting an intention can center around a positive quality we want to cultivate or an aspect of life we want to change. It doesn’t matter if it takes the form of a word, an affirmation, or a mantra; what matters is the spirit, the consciousness, the faith, and the expectation behind the intention. When we combine our will and our intention to change, individually or collectively, something magical happens. As we get clear about our intentions and cultivate gratitude, the Universe conspires to assist us and a new dawn begins to emerge.
The second is to Start Anew. The underlying truth is that every time we wake up, we are at choice. We can look at the day ahead, and feel crushed by our to-do list and a perception of responsibilities, or we can remember that our only responsibility is to express ourselves as the divine beings that we are.
I do not know about all of you; however, I find it quite wonderful to know that at any given moment we have the freedom, the ability, and the power to choose what to do and how to live our lives. In every single situation in which we find ourselves, we always have a choice—sometimes more than one choice or option. When we make a choice, it gives us a sense of moving forward and being in control of our experience. Choice is one of the greatest gifts we get from life.
For some of us, this may sound amazing and actually quite easy to step into; for others, however, it can be one of the hardest things in the world to do. People have this perception that once they make a choice, that’s it, they’re stuck with it. While there may be some truth to this, we also need to realize that we can change our minds at any given moment despite the choices we may have made. Nothing is concrete or cast in stone. A choice is not a forever thing, it’s a “for now” thing. We can always change our minds, we can always make a new choice.
Humans have free will for a reason. No matter our situation, we can decide in a moment to turn things around. If our heart is in the right place and we are in alignment with our inner divinity, our intention is on fertile ground. We can choose to see the present moment as a launching pad for our future. We can choose to entertain the possibility of a new beginning, a new dawn. We can choose to see this particular new dawn as the day that everything changes.
The third idea is A Whole New World. If you have been attending our services or classes for any length of time, you would have heard me saying time and time again that we arrived on the planet innocent: a blank slate. It was our truth then and continues to be our truth with each and every new day, each and every new moment, each and every new breath, each and every new dawn.
Living a clean-slate kind of life doesn’t mean that nothing goes wrong, or that there are no challenges. It means anything can go wrong, but it won’t stop us or drag us down. It means changing how we look at our life and choosing to rewrite our own history every day. It means not dragging yesterday’s baggage into today, and allowing ourselves the opportunity to be the person we were meant to be at any given moment, even if we are not that good at it yet. It allows us to see each new dawn as a gift to unwrap—an opportunity for a new story to be written. If we want to grow, change, and evolve, we have to be willing to have a clean slate.
While we may really want to create and move forward from a clean slate, it is not always an easy thing to do. One issue is that our past experiences often cast long shadows energetically. Another issue we may have is that our mind uses what has already happened as a measuring stick for what is likely to happen moving forward. The invitation is to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that what has happened up until now means nothing for future possibilities.
We are supported by an underlying foundational idea that Principle is not bound by precedent. The Divine is not bound by what has happened before. It is unconditioned, and since we were created in the image and likeness of the Divine, our essence is unconditioned. We are not bound by precedent. We are not bound by our past beliefs or our past experiences. Our 2024 annual theme of A Grand Rising creates an opportunity for all of us to remember, every time we wake up, that we are experiencing our own Grand Rising, while also inspiring a worldwide movement. As we begin each day with a grand rising, we have the power to co-create a world that works for everyone.
Join us next week as we continue our conversation around A Grand Rising with a message entitled “A New Day.” The past doesn’t define us. Now is the time to apply the lessons learned and put our teaching into practice. We are the heroes that the world has been seeking.
